Spent yesterday in Eze Village, a medieval town on the top of a cliff overlooking the Mediterranean before heading out to Monaco for the afternoon. There may only be 2 square km to the city/principality but they manage to fit a lot in by going straight up. There is, of course, Monte Carlo which is magnificent looking although too scary to venture inside of what with all the security guards. Then there is the Grimaldi family palace up on the cliff-top overlooking the town. And there was also a race going on… not the Monaco Grand Prix unfortunately, but a go-cart race going on in the harbour near all the massive Cayman Island yachts.
Today we are just being lazy. We slept in and then wandered down to the fruit and flower market to buy breakfast/lunch before finding a spot on the beach. I went for a nice long swim in the Mediterranean and then dried off in the sun. This afternoon we walked up to the Matisse museum only to find out that they have decided to close it for the winter, which they normally don’t do. And now here I am, sitting in a net bar in Nice…

So… since I last wrote, we visited Munich… and were given some stinking huge (ie 1L) beer steins from Oktoberfest. They are pretty heavy so I’m not sure how people managed to life them with beer in them. Thanks to Elisabeth for bringing them back to Canada for us so we don’t have to lug them around for the next month and a half.
Then it was off to see Liz in Freiburg for 2 nights and we got to see where she is at uni this year. Its a pretty city and I think she’ll be just fine… 😉 We also got to go to church in English!!
From there it was on to Switzerland. Switzeland = Very cool, lots of mountains and fabulous chocolate! Thanks Heidi and Elisabeth for letting us hang out! Heidi very nicely drove us around and over 2 2000m+ mountain passes and to a huge glacier then over to Lucerne and then Liechtenstein. That was pretty cool. We ate Raclette (sp?) and reminisced about college days. Elisabeth put us up for 1 night and showed us parts of Lausanne – Roman ruins, the lake, part of downtown…
Then it was a 7+ hour train to Nice. That is where we are now. Haven’t seen much of the city yet, but we will over the next few days. Tomorrow maybe we’ll got to Monaco and try to make some money to finance the rest of the trip…!

Today we took the train 2.5 hours out to Füssen and back for the day. What is Füssen, you might ask? Well. Ever watched a Walt Disney movie and seen this? Walt had to get it from somewhere, and that somewhere is none other than Neuschwanstein Castle just outside of Füssen in very southern Germany (Bavaria). It poured rain in the morning, but late afternoon was quite nice. We wandered around the area (walked about 13 km all told), and went through the castle. King Ludwig II who built it had a bit of an obsession with Wagner’s operas and with swans, but it was still a pretty cool castle.

After spending a very cultured evening last night in Saltburg, we are now back in Germany.
We left Prague 5 days ago (I think) to Vienna. Vienna was… well… honestly… disappointing. It didn’t help that we were there on Saturday/Sunday consequentally nothing, and I mean NOTHING, was open and we were coming off of an awesome experience in Prague. Don’t get me wrong, Vienna is a lovely city with amazing buildings, palaces, the Danube, Freud’s house… but the hostel was sub-standard and nothing was open so there wasn’t much to see or do. After 2 nights (one day), we took off to Salzburg which is much cooler. There is a better vibe to Salzburg – more like Victoria – with narrow, treelined streets (Cook St Village type), winding roads, nice river through town, mountains, Mozart… and a cool fortress on a clifftop above town (Ok, Victoria doesn’t have the last 2, but it has everything else). We wandered around town and last night treated ourselves to dinner at the fortress followed by a concert. And it was not just any dinner – 4 fantastic courses of dinner! The concert was just 3 pieces- the first 2 were by Mozart (a string quartet and a piano quartet) and the last was a Dvorak string quartet. For those of you who want more details, I have the programme…!
So now we’ve headed back to Germany for 5 days or so. This time we are in the south. We arrived in Munich today. Oktoberfest ended yesterday and we have seen surprisinly few signs of it except tacky souviners everywhere. Not sure how they took down the rides and beer tents in less than 12 hours, but apparently they have accomplished it. While we are here we plan to head out to Fussen to see the crazy prince’s castle Disney based Cinderella’s on and then, Saturday, its off to Freiburg to see Liz!

We’ve been in Prague for about 2 and a half days now, and I have to say that I love it. There are about a million old buildings here, and some incredible churches. We went to St Nicks today, which is a magnificent Baroque church. Yesterday, we went to one that is the centre of Hussite Christianity – just outside is a monument to Jan Hess.
We’ve been hanging out with some Australian guys the last couple of days, so that has been fun to spend time in a bigger group. Tonight we’re off for a duck feast. The Czech Republic is super cheap so our duck feast of 150 Czech whatever they use here will be about 7 dollars canadian. Not bad for a feast. Tonight we’re off to visit a castle in town.

Right, so I just had a lovely post done up and something happened and this crappy internet decided it didn’t like it. So the abbreviated version is: we’re in Berlin, Berlin is cool. We’ve done some neat stuff. I’m hanging out with Elly tomorrow. Leave for Prague on Monday. The other version was much nicer but I’m much too lazy to type it out again.

We arrived here in Köln (Cologne), Germany yesterday afternoon after taking a train from Amsterdam in the morning. It was one of those high speed trains so we were going over 200 km/hr at some points. We couldn’t get much faster than that because there were a number of stops along the way.
The first thing you see when you walk out of the train station in Köln is the stinking huge French Gothic Cathedral. Today we explored around it and in it, climbed the tower and stuff like that. There is lots of really neat stuff inside it including amazing stained glass windows, mosaic floors in the area with the chapels (east end), carving around the entry portals (once I get my photos loaded, hopefully tomorrow in Kassel, there will be a quiz…!), and, the best ever (because I studied it in Art History) is the Three Magi Reliquary shrine made by Nicholas of Verdun (that mention is for you, Katie!).
We did do some other stuff here in Köln, but that has mostly consisted of walking around and vegging in the hostel. Tomorrow it is off to Kassel for the night to stay with Natalie’s host family from when she was here before, then it is off to Berlin! Still having fun and enjoying seeing everything. I’m off to read about how everyone else is before I run out of net time here. 🙂

Well, its our last night in Amsterdam… we’ve had a great time here. I love having the canals everywhere, although sometimes I wonder how people can park so close without driving into the canal…
We’ve done lots of cool things so far – Rijksmuseum and Anne Frank Huis (finally! 14 years in the waiting…), Van Gogh museum, Delft for the day, the beach in Den Haag in the evening, Leiden and Oegstgeest to see Tante Anneke and Dad’s old house, hanging out with Natalie’s friend Frank and my friend Lyndel and her husband Timon.
This morning we went to Christian City Church Amsterdam (offshoot of CCC Oxford Falls in Sydney) which was also lots of fun.
I’ve enjoyed eating the Dutch food I love… herring, kroket, stroopwafels, drops… ahhh.
Tomorrow, we’re off to Cologne. Hopefully I’ll be able to upload some pics soon, but I think Natalie was able too today, so see the link I posted earlier to find some!